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Calm. Breathe. This man is your client—he needs you. Plus, we’re being watched. He won’t do anything to you, not here. You are in charge.
The second body at the table, a dark-haired woman, stood up to greet me. For a second, my heart rate spiked like a rabbit in front of a wolf, and I was intimately aware that there was no way I could open that door from the inside. The woman smiled at me. She looked tired but distinctly familiar. I blinked and jolted out of my terror long enough to look at her. Yeah, familiar was a good word.
She was Richard’s mother. She had to be.
She was shorter and paler than Richard, but otherwise her features had clearly crossed over to him. The dark hair, the dark eyes, the slant of her brow, and the strength of her jaw—and her confidence, too. She gave off a different aura than her husband, not necessarily less dangerous but different, more protective. If Andrea Marino was a wolf, then she was a bear. Content to live and let live, unless she or hers were threatened. I immediately liked her very much.
As silly as it might have been, her presence put me at ease enough to introduce myself. “Good afternoon, Mr. Marino, I’m Lauren Kylin, and I’ll be representing you in this case. May I sit down?”
“Of course,” Mr. Marino said. “This is my wife, Andrea.” I blinked. Andrea and…Andrea? I knew Andrea was a masculine name in Italian and a feminine one in English, but really, what were the odds? Mr. Marino smirked, and Mrs. Marino snorted.
“Mrs. Marino is fine,” she said. I flushed a little—yeah, they probably got the same kind of response pretty often.
“Of course,” I smiled, setting my briefcase down and shaking both of their hands before taking a seat. “Now, your son has told me what he knows, but I’d like to go over it with you to make sure I have all the information. I understand that the surveillance cameras in this room do not have audio, and while I’m taking notes, I won’t be recording, so please speak freely. You ordered 416 light fixtures from a Venezuelan company on October 14th of last year, and they arrived at the Illinois International Port District in shipping container GX8297-1 three days ago, on April 7th, correct?”
“Yes, they shipped out of Porto Cabimas,” Mr. Marino nodded.
“And some of these light fixtures were carrying Colombian heroin.”
“Yes. There were four fixtures in each box, and the third one down in each would have a total of twelve ounces hidden in the lampshades.” I nodded, writing that down.
“So that’s a total of…” I plugged the numbers into my calculator, “1,248 ounces.”
“Correct.”
Heroin was a Schedule 1 drug, so a second-degree felony and 1,248 ounces calculated out to… 35.38 kilograms, so for that amount, he’d definitely be getting the maximum sentence. That meant 15 years without any charges involved in importing controlled substances. The DOJ was aggressive in prosecuting international drug trafficking, so that charge on its own could hold a maximum of life in prison.
And I had to get him out of it without so much as probation.
“You’ve likely deduced this yourself,” I said, “but the only way out of this is to throw doubt on whether you actually ordered the drugs or not. If we can prove that it would be possible for someone else to have used your shipment to smuggle without your knowledge, then we can get you out of here, but they’re going to be looking at you very closely, given your unofficial history. I’m going to need to know everything you can tell me, starting with the financials. Even Al Capone was caught on tax fraud, after all. Who supplied you with the drugs?”
“The Colombian cartel,” Mr. Marino said easily. “They trafficked the heroin from Colombia to Venezuela, and we paid off the package handlers to hide it.”
“Paid them how?” I asked, scribbling that down. If that payment could be traced, the case was dead in the water.
“It was billed as ‘expedited shipping cost,’ and we have communications with the manufacturer of the light fixtures that said expedition was delayed due to machine malfunction in the factory during production. Since that was unrelated to the shipping company, the expedition fee was non-refundable.”
I nodded, hand moving as fast as I could make it. “Smart,” I acknowledged. After all, they’d found a way to hide illegal activities under a legitimate charge, so it was impossible to prove they paid for the drugs. These people were definitely professional—not that I was surprised in the least. I’d expected nothing less from them. “I’m going to need copies of that communication. Will you sign an agreement to disclose any texts, emails, or phone records regarding this issue to me? Of course, I’ll only take what you give me. I have no interest in your activities outside the scope of this case.”
Mr. Marino smiled crookedly, seemingly pleased with knowing I had no intention of sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. “Of course. I’ll give you Rich’s contact info, you can retrieve all of that from him.”
“Yes, sir,” I nodded. “And how did you communicate with the cartel? What’s the money trail there?”
“None,” Mr. Marino announced with a smirk. “I sent my former underboss to Brazil for ‘vacation,’ where he crossed over to Colombia and made contact with the cartel. He convinced them to set up a non-profit front, and all official communications have gone through there. As far as anyone can tell, I’ve been donating $500 from my personal account each month to assist with rebuilding in areas affected by landslide.”
“A true philanthropist,” Mrs. Marino grinned. I couldn’t help it; I grinned, too.
“I can see that,” I said slyly. “Now, did you pay this employee to go on his trip?”
“No, I gave him a generous bonus, and he used said funds to enjoy a trip abroad.” I tried not to show how giddy I was.
“You are the most prepared clients I could ever ask for,” I smiled. “Now, a few more questions before we move on to the arrest itself…”
Already, I was happier than ever that I’d taken the case. Someday, a few years from now, I’d be looking back on this as my first step out from under the thumbs of senior partners—for now, I was content with getting out of the broom closet they called an office, but I wouldn’t be stopping there. The day I cut the ribbon on my very own practice, I had a feeling I’d be thanking this case for it.
I couldn’t wait.
Chapter Seven
